I took it upon myself to record the migration of every tagged chinook in greater detail.

There were a total of 12 chinook tracked. Five of those fish (42%) never escaped to fulfill their life purpose… they simply never made it to the river. While it's remotely possible they may have succumbed to predators (beluga, salmon shark, seal) their most probable fate was entanglement in a drift gill net.

Of the seven fish that entered the Kenai, most spent 2-3 weeks milling in front of the Kenai-Kasilof mouths before finally committing to the river. Had there been sockeye set gillnets deployed along the beach corridor (they were closed by emergency order effective July 27) even fewer of these fish would have made it past the gauntlet. Certainly so for fish #9562 who burned 25 days in the Inlet mindlessly running the relay between Kenai and Kasilof before finally committing post haste to the Kenai on Aug 19.